


but if your heart is a dog fight

by amasianfish



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-10
Updated: 2015-03-10
Packaged: 2018-03-17 04:44:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3515792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amasianfish/pseuds/amasianfish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>then i'm ready to go to war like</p>
            </blockquote>





	but if your heart is a dog fight

**Author's Note:**

> Title and work based on the song "Carry Your Throne" by Jon Bellion. How do people write 10k word chapters?! I could barely get these ones out. It's incredible really, how much other people write and how skillfully. I am in awe.

Root dreams of Shaw.

 

She dreams of her eyes, sparkling with mischief as she sends a man to the ground, clutching his knees.

She dreams of her nose, nostrils flaring as she approaches Root with fury etched in every corner of her face.

She dreams of her lips, shiny with grease as her tongue picks up the traces the steak left behind.

She dreams of her hair, carelessly in a long ponytail, some days wavier than others.

She dreams of her neck, veins straining against the skin as Root leaves marks behind with her teeth.

She dreams of her fingers, small like a child's but practiced like a cello player's, assembling and disassembling a gun with precision and speed.

She dreams of her hands, rough from old wounds of bone colliding with bone, blood painting her knuckles into a masterpiece.

She dreams of Shaw in all her glory, violence and anger and sex and recklessness.

She dreams of Shaw falling down and down and down, the blood spraying from her torso, almost gorgeous in its apathy; she dreams of Shaw's eyes, cold and furious and defiant, Martine's face and the barrel of a gun the last image she will ever see; she dreams of Shaw's nose, nostrils flaring yet again as she attempts to poison Samaritan with her anger; she dreams of Shaw's lips, set in a hard line, the taste of Root fading quickly, quicker than she can bear; she dreams of Shaw's hair, pooled around her neck on the cold linoleum floor, a sea of black thick as blood; she dreams of Shaw's neck, tense and unmoving and exposed; she dreams of Shaw's fingers, stiff and quaking as if her displeasure about the situation was so immense it caused aftershocks on her limbs; she dreams of Shaw's hands, one still grasping her USP Compact, a piece of plastic and metal that tried so hard to save her but in the end couldn't; she dreams of Shaw.

Root sometimes wakes up with her heart threatening to kamikaze out of her chest, her hands fisting the sheets, the cotton feeling like the metal criss cross of a cage, face wet with tears she doesn't remember shedding, the image of a body hitting the floor stained onto her eyelids. She sometimes hears the Machine in her ear, whispering disjointed phrases about her next mission, and Root sometimes thinks, _Y_ _ou're here now. Where were you then?_ Sometimes Root pretends that those whispers and murmurs are Shaw right behind her, saying some offhand comment about her past life as an ISA agent or a Marine or a doctor, and Root soaks in the rarely released information as fast as she can. Root sometimes lies back down in bed, staring mindlessly at the ceiling of whatever house she's in that night, shaking and shivering and shaping marks into her skin with her nails.

Root sometimes wakes up with her heart at an erratic pace, her body slick with sweat, fingers clenching and unclenching, an ache in her core and her chest, her eyes rolling back in her head as she whispers Shaw's first name in an attempt to make the image of her in her brain materialize and appear in reality. Root sometimes manages to keep the image of Shaw for a moment more, licking and scratching, her hair a mess between Root's legs, and Root sometimes unravels, crying out for Shaw as she lets go of reality for the briefest amount of time. Root sometimes can't keep the image of Shaw transfixed in her brain, and screams to the empty room, the metallic taste of blood entering her mouth as she bites her lip and splits it, needing to know why her knight, why her life was taken from her. 

Root always receives silence in response.

Root travels around the world, Sri Lanka, China, Australia, Yemen, Azerbaijan, doing this or that for Her, dodging bullets and knives for Her, creating an app for Her, hacking into government sites and files for Her, saving lives for Her, tracking Samaritan operatives for  _her_. Root shoots people, some good and some bad and some in between, sometimes in the knees, sometimes in the chest, sometimes in the head. Root can feel her carefully crafted humanity and progress chip off like old rust with each bullet. Root inevitably ends up in New York City time and time again, to rescue Harold and do the Machine's bidding like a puppet. The ventriloquist's strings are getting tangled and confused, a web of withheld information and whispered orders, and Root clings to Shaw's USP Compact as if it will save her even if it didn't save  _her_. 

Root knows Sameen. She knows Sameen cared. She knows Sameen cares. She knows Sameen cared about perhaps nine people her entire life, and a dog. Her father, her mother, Michael Cole, Genrika Zhirova, John Reese, Jocelyn Carter, Harold Finch, Lionel Fusco, Root. And Bear. Root knows four of these nine are dead. Root knows the rest may soon follow suit. Root knows Sameen's heart is a stoic and stubborn muscle, having believed one thing for so long it almost became reality, until she met this ragtag band of misfits. Root knows Sameen's heart is now fighting itself, trying to teach itself an emotion it had repressed for so long, a war waged in heat and blood and hesitant emotion. Root knows she will stand witness to this battle for as long as Sameen allows.

The darkness saturates everything Root touches. It inks up relationships and aliases and people. Root wants to burn it all down, turn the darkness into light, burn the entire world, burn Samaritan and John Greer and Martine Rousseau and Jeremy Lambert and watch them blister and turn into ash and bone; she wants to burn the Machine and its sweet nothings; she wants to burn it all down and watch the scorched earth crumble to reveal her knight.

Root would give her knight a crown.

Root refuses to surrender her throne. To Samaritan, the Machine's whims, Harold's morals. She refuses. She wants Sameen to sit up there with her.

She wants Sameen perched on the armrest of the golden chair, her eyes rolling as she is barraged with Root's saucy comments, her nose smelling Root's perfume, her lips fighting a grin, her hair hidden underneath a crown that Sameen desperately wants to remove, her neck covered in a trail of lipstick in the shape of Root's mouth, her fingers of one hand reluctantly intertwined with Root's and stroking Root's thumb in the shadows where no one can see, her other hand lazily gripping her USP Compact and stroking the barrel, too.

Root dreams of fire and crowns and thrones. She dreams of maybes and almosts.

 

Root dreams of Shaw.

 


End file.
